1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a method for making connections on the Internet, and, more particularly, to a method for causing connections to be made among client systems.
2. Background Information
The conventional structure of the Internet is based on combinations of clients and servers, in which the client systems obtain information from the servers. Thus, to retrieve information, an individual client system makes a connection with a server and requests the particular information needed. The information is then sent from the server to the client. With this method, each client has an individual connection to the server. If there are too many connections to the server to allow a new connection to be established, a client wishing to make an additional connection is denied access. What is needed is a way to increase the number of clients which can be connected to a single server without requiring a substantial increase in the server hardware to provide additional ports.
Some servers provide what appears to be a broadcasting function by relaying information from one client connected to the server to all other clients connected to the same server. An example of this type of information sharing is found in the "chat relay" server protocol. However, this type of interconnection is also limited by the number of clients which can be connected to the server. Again, what is needed is a way to increase the number of clients which can be interconnected in a substantial way.